My God, even when Patrick's right, he's wrong!
Beacon Hill has had more than its fair share of scandals this year. But Flowergate? Cigargate?Yesterday, after legislators agreed to approve pension reform, Governor Deval Patrick sent House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo a box of cigars and Senate President Therese Murray some flowers.
Nice, right? You can bet the cigars weren't White Owls purchased at a nearby CVS, and the flowers weren't carnations grabbed from a street vendor. One senator, not exactly schooled in the floral arts, described the elegant bouquet as "expensive ones, not like $20 or $50 ones, but designer ones."
In fact, they were so nice, sitting in a fancy vase, that they became a topic of conversation when the Senate held a closed-door caucus to discuss ethics reform in Murray's office, with the flowers on display nearby.
Well, nice but for one nagging fact: They probably violated state ethics rules, which ban gifts of $50 or more to a public official in return for an official action. They certainly violated a key tenet of the proposed ethics overhaul Patrick is trying to push through the Legislature: an outright ban on gifts of any kind to public officials.
Last night, when a reporter inquired about the gifts, officials and their various spokespeople kicked into damage control.
Patrick aides argued a technicality, that since the gifts were to the offices of the House speaker and Senate president and not to them individually, no ethics laws were violated.
UPDATE: More from Scot Lehigh, the Herald and the Globe.
SECOND UPDATE: From Robert Ambrogi, Jeff Jacoby, the Herald and the Globe.
